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FTC Dismisses Complaint Against Rambus
swordboy writes "A federal judge just threw out the FTC lawsuit against Rambus. This has been discussed at length here before but this changes the landscape yet again. An interesting, possibly coincidental item is that Intel just today announced a new and very powerful DRAM interface that bypasses Rambus IP altogether."
Now, the question is, does this offer the same price-point as DDR?
:)
I mean, DDR-II has a significant price-premium over current DDR, but if it doesn't....
Woo. It might be worth going Intel for once
Intel just today announced a new and very powerful DRAM interface that bypasses Rambus IP altogether.
Unfortunately, most court disputes between hi-tech companies finish long after the technologies in question are dead. Just look at Lineo/Canopy : when they won the DRDOS settlement against Microsoft, Windows 95 and DOS were already just a painful reminder of the past.
So yes, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Intel can do without the Rambus IP. However, I doubt it's the real reason, because even when the disputed technologies are obsolete when the court reaches its verdict (or the parties settle), the money from damages or settlement is very real.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Within 5 years, I predict that most machines will use RAM memory for all system storage. A backup power system will be required, but system speeds will go through the roof due to faster data access times.
Hard drives fail and are slow as hell. They are the bottlenecks in 99% of today's systems. That will change soon, thanks in part to Intel and AMD.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
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Please help metamoderate.
Does this mean that RDRAM will become affordable now?
thisnukes4u.net
I can confirm that many internal R&D projects right now are focusing on this very thing -- diskless PCs.
Rambus story shows that, in US, anything is possible in courts, even if you screw people, even if you do nasty things, outrageously lie, etc... at the end you may get awarded in court.
That's why making fun of SCO doesn't make me laugh much, because there is a possibility that they can get what they want in the courts.
Its makes sence really, if you look at alot of motherboards they have 4 slots for memory in channels. The "bus" is almost gone already, might as well just kill it and go point to point. Don't but 4 channels thats harder I expect they will reduce the standard boards to 2 or 3 slots! But in a point to point system they don't have to worry about match memory and the like...
James
Nothing insightful or interesting about this post.
Actually it's more like RAMBUS has *been* dead ever since DDR / DDR2 became competitive in terms of prices.
Not just regurgitating history, though - I wonder if Intel will learn a lesson from RAMBUS's demise in regard to the new fangled transmission scheme*. RAMBUS died because it was 1) not open and 2) charged royalties. DRAM is such a low margin product that royalties will kill any possibility of your product hitting mass market (in RAMBUS's case, even with intel's backing - because none of memory manufactures liked it, so despite playing along they were really thinking of JEDEC and how to get DDR to be more popular / competitive). Intel, though, is probably doing this in a choke move for AMD, so it puts Intel at a tough decision point again: open standard = AMD can use it too, or RAMBUS version 2. That said, Intel isn't stupid, I am guessing their upcoming processors will be designed around a high memory bandwidth architecture to take advantage of it better than what competitors can. The low turnaround time (i.e. no bus turnaround!) is so sexy in a geeky way. circuit board designers are going to get soooo much headache over this though...
* the concept is indeed pretty cool, though you'll need some tough lil drivers that can handle incoming voltage swings while it's driving. The power dissipation on these I/O buffers are key, but in reality these things already exist, of course - just a bit pricy.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Nice rehash. You forgot the, oh, I don't know... POINT?!?!
I did that once, didn't get caught either. The driver was freaked though.
I can't possibly imagine how you could have followed this case and come to that conclusion unless you've had blinders on and are deep into Rambus stock. Rambus deserves the title "Litigous Bastards" almost as much as SCO.
-dameron
A Buick... well, right on. He's not to be trusted. The last good car they had was the Land Cruiser.
1.Steal technology from other companies at trade industry conference, and patent it
2.Sue other companies before its barely in use and make sure nobody uses said technology
3.Get tied up in legal battles until patent is useless
4.???
5.Profit!
Please help metamoderate.
RAMBUS is another company that is dedicated to making its money now through lawyers. Intel thought that they could take more control of PC design my picking a patented memory structure, and RAMBUS was the perfect lackey ito accomplish this. Their contract with RAMBUS would have had RAMBUS paying Intel back once RDRAM sales exceeded a certain amount. It was a win-win for those two companies, and lose-lose for everyone else due to higher long term prices for all users, and manufacturers.
The reason for this is the RDRAM design. It takes more space on a wafer to produce, and that is why it costs more ( commission to to RAMBUS is another part, but the size difference is the key cost difference ). So memory prices would have been much higher, and Intel would have been able to squeeze AMD more due to the patented bus that RDRAM uses.
If you go back in time, it was exactly as Intel was about to force RDRAM down everyones throats, that AMD released the Athlon. Suddenly there was an alternative to Intel in performance, and by not using RDRAM, the price difference was extreme. This is the point that AMD surged ahead in market share, and while the inroads they made were overall not significant, they were enough to show that not everyone would be pushed around.
RAMBUS did come up with some interesting design innovations, but as soon as the writing on the wall was that RDRAM was dead due to lower prices with DDR, they turned into SCO by suing everyone that was making DDR, by use of info they had taken from JEDEC and adding it after the fact to pending patents from RDRAM. Another stellar example of USPTO excellence. RAMBUS is dead, but someone wants to make money from the rotting corpse. Just compare how similar the lawyers fees are for RAMBUS and SCO.
The difference between Rambus and SCO being that Rambus actually holds the patents and has been entirely forthcoming with documentation that shows that they are the true IP owners of the RDRAM designs.
SCO has done little more than huff and puff about their supposed stolen IP in Linux without giving the general public a chance to take a look at it.
Any time you have this discussion on Slashdot, you will hear the same opinion: that IP owners who sue violators are evil 'litigous bastards'. The fact of the matter is that those companies who hold the patents, trademarks, and copyrights should be suing to maximize their investment in obtaining those intellectual properties.
That said I think it is unsuprizing that Intel and the manufacturers would look somewhere else for the next generation of RAM technologies. They'd be foolish to deal with a companay that had tricked them before.
Rambus, long an innovator in memory designs has been virtually sued to death by JEDEC members over their IP rights to the RDRAM designs.
Nice, if it were true. The reason the JEDEC members were sueing was that Rambus was writing down the other companies ideas that were brought up at the JEDEC meetings and having their patent lawyers apply for patents on those ideas the next day. The other companies were not patenting those proposals that they were putting forth at JEDEC while establishing the SDRAM standards, due to a agreement between all members that the SDRAM standard would contain no patent-encumbered technology. When other JEDEC members caught wind of this and complained, RAMBUS left JEDEC, but their patent applications on SDRAM technology continued to change to cover new aspects of the SDRAM spec after each JEDEC meeting! They had a spy (codename: Secret Squirrel) in the meetings who was forwarding the tech to them while the spec was still being determined, and when the spec was published, most of the SDRAM spec was subject to Rambus patents on tech developed by the other members.
Rambus ripped off the JEDEC members and the courts are saying that this is OK. WTF? All is fair in love, war, and business (I guess).
Read, L
Get fired from Caltech?
Shouldn't the subject read "FTC Complaint Against Rambus Dismmissed" instead of "FTC Dismisses Complaint Against Rambus". The title as it currently reads almost made me think the FTC wasn't all that bad. Then I read the body. Oh well, back to hating the FTC.
It would have been impossible for Rambus to have gained those patents in time for presentation at the JEDEC conferences. They had to have had those designs in hand with the patent process already underway to have been able to produce the patents at the conference. The only thing that Rambus did which was wrong was agree through a gentleman's handshake that they would not encumber the SDRAM design with patent issues. Mind you, it's not a legal agreement to simply agree to something like that, and at the first time they were confronted with their violation of the agreement, they took one of the two recourses afforded to them: leave the committee. The other would have been to dump their patents which would have been a dumb move seeing as how they are a pure IP company making their money off of patents.
The JEDEC members continue to rip off Rambus every day that they produce SDRAM based on Rambus designs and refuse to pay them for it.
Actually, I think you might not be aware of the manner of Rambus' actions. First of all, they're not seeking licensing for the RDRAM designs, but for patents that are infringed upon by the DDR RAM implementation.
The reason other members of the hardware community are so upset, and the reason that Rambus has been the target of so many lawsuits, is that they were on the design commitee which decided upon the spec. for DDR in the first place, and they presented their technology to the standards working group conveniently without mentioning the fact that they owned patents on the implementation.
That's why they deserve the title of 'litigious bastards'-- because that's pretty 'bastardly' behavior.
I'M GOING TO SUE YOU!
So? I'm sure Rambus has a patent application in the pipeline that they'll just amend to include Intel's latest technology.
the concept is indeed pretty cool, though you'll need some tough lil drivers that can handle incoming voltage swings while it's driving.
No you don't. You already need to drive a line that's got a charge on it from the stuff you previously drove onto it. This doesn't change that. The local end just sees the far end as being terminated by a resistor to a voltage that is either low or high, rather than being terminated by a resistor to a constant voltage.
Driving both ways simultaneously, though, is very cute.
The downside is the need to daisy-chain. That means you're driving multiple lines at 3.6 Gbps on EVERY chip, ALL THE TIME. That's a LOT of power. Even if you interrupt the daisy chain at the selected chip (and arrange things so that the quiescent states of the transmitters at both ends of an idle line match) it's still a lot of power unless you localize most of your memory access to the closest chip.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So does this mean the recent Pentium suits will be thrown out too???
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
For them to be like SCO, they should have threatened to sue customers which purchased Athlons with DDR, and ridiculously claim that "The only reason your system is so fast is because your memory has our IP in it; those underpaid AMD designers couldn't possibly have done a good system design just by themselves" (and not because you have a state-of-the-art processor ...)
The Raven
Antitrust violations for what? I'd think that intentionally including patent heavy technologies in order to stop newcomers from entering the market would be an antitrust violation before insisting on creating a patent free standard.
Rather than hide behind the AC switch while throwing insults without meaning and accusations you can't back up, why not add me to your "enemies" list and make your anomosity public knowledge?
It's funny how people behave when the facts do not support their chosen ideology.
Read, L
Seeing that the company is lawsuit-happy I'm suprised the industry hasn't completely underwritten them by now. Unless Rambus signed some huge or long term contracts with the motherboard makers, then simply stopping production of boards supporting their memory would bankrupt them quickly.
.. and .. then a whole slew of news reports on lawsuits and questioning the company's practices.
I trust they won't be part of the JEDEC and its meetings now.
Incidentally, Rambus is one of the few tech companies where when you type in the company name in a search engine you get the company website
Speaks volumes of Rambus.
Sincerely,
Mark "Mad Dog" Madson
(The 2nd most awesome Laker ever)
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!
Because refusing to use patented technologies would rob the public of superior technology. They are allowed to 'strive' for unpatented technologies, but they cannot outright ban them.
Case law for this is American Society of Sanitary Engineering before the FTC.
"the American Society of Sanitary Engineering ("ASSE") had refused to permit inclusion of patented technology in a standard for ballcocks, even though the patented technology in question protected against backflow at least as well as the ballcock valves that were included within the standard. The FTC charged that the refusal to permit inclusion of patented technology into a standard constituted a concerted refusal to deal and thus violated Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act."
Something glossed over by the article (and Rambus), but very important, is that this isn't anything even remotely like the end of the FTC investigation into this.
"Today's ruling came after a three-month evidentiary hearing and is subject to potential further review by the full Commission and review by a United States Court of Appeal."
and
"The Judge's initial decision is subject to review by the full Commission, either on its own motion or at the request of either party."
Basically one judge threw out the preliminary suit brought by a small commitee of the FTC. The case will now almost certainly go before the full FTC and, unlike an appeals process, this will involve a complete reexamination of the body of evidence. Essentially there will be a second, independent judgement by the FTC again on this matter, with potentially (and hopefully) differing results.
It wasn't. It had a high latency and it's bandwidth only exceeded the bandwidth of SDRAM a bit at first. Then, as DDR ramped up to speed, DDR blew it away in bandwidth and latency.
Rambus was never a great idea. It was very difficult to design a mobo with it. It is rumored that no company ever designed one without the help of Rambus the company.
To be honest, the only reason Rambus went anywhere is because Intel signed an agreement to force bundle it with P4. And this act itself launched Athlon and AMD, because Rambus was unaffordable and didn't provide levels of performance that were unreachable with regular RAM.
If Intel had applied the same level of effort to their SDRAM or DDR motherboards, they would have produced higher performance than Rambus at lower cost. But Intel didn't, they had signed an agreement not to. And they threatened to sue VIA if they brought a (presumably high performance) SDRAM chipset to market for the P4. Only once Intel shipped their own SDRAM-based P4 chipset (the 8200?) did Intel drop this threat against VIA.
RDRAM was mostly marketing. It's performance was never really all it was cracked up to be.
this thing would be more painful to work on chip to chip communications since you don't know if the other chip is Z or the logic state you are receiving simply corresponded with your current driving logic state. (I suppose one can always send a enable / disable signal similar to DQS along with a dataline to indicated if it's active)
You have two misconceptions about the scheme in question:
1) There is no "Z" state. Both sides are ALWAYS driving.
2) You don't have to stop driving the line to receive what the other side is driving toward you.
This is essentially the same hack that lets a telephone send energy at the same band of frequencies in both directions simultaneously, on a single pair of wires:
- You terminate the line at, or near, its characteristic impedence, and so does the device at the far end.
- You inject a current into the line/terminator junction (or, equivalently, shift the voltage at the "cold" end of the terminating resistor) to send.
- You compare the voltage on the pin (or current through the pin, or current through the terminating resistor) to what you expected to see if the far end was at a no-current-injected (or terminator "cold" end at ground) state. The difference is the signal being injected at the far end.
The wire is being driven at both ends at all times (no Zs). You can always tell what the far end is sending, regardless of what you're sending.
If you chose to send by injecting a voltage at the "cold" end of the terminator, you dissipate no power when both ends are sending the same value. You dissipate a significant amount when both ends are sending opposite signals. But you also dissipate the same amount if the transmitting ends of two separate wires are switched - for the time it takes the signal to propagate and the reflection to come back. If the separation between the transmitter and receiver is more than half the length of a bit time, the quiescent state has both sides driving the same value, and the two ends drive opposite about as often as same, it's a wash.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They have a perfectly valid patent scam going, the FCC court case was on pretty thin ice.
They own the fabs, they are the ones making something usefull and they decide what that is ... why the hell would they go out of their way generating revenue for the lawyers gearing up to sue them?
Just put enough banks parallel till you have sufficient write speed.
... most solid state storage drives are battery backed DRAM/SRAM, plenty fast.
BTW
Dunno if it's occurred to you, but you can "read" data off a hard drive too, not just "download" to it. And better still, it doesn't have to involve your slow old net connection!
I've noticed that, when "reading" from my hard drive (for such things as loading my warez appz, copying/moving my pr0n, searching the IE cache to read my sister's hotmail etc), I still have to wait for it to finish sometimes, and dude, that sux0rz when you just know she's gonna step into the room any minute.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The ALJ just ruled that the case is dismissed from his point of view, but this is not an all out victory as RamBus is claiming already. What will happen next is the FTC counsel will take this matter to the full FTC Commission and they will make their own full investigation. Unlike an appeals court process where the judge can only look to see what was wrong, the FTC can fully investigate the entire claim all over again, then deal out their punishments as they see fit.
But then again, IANAL.
Whatever man, I spelled it write!
Was this FTC suit based on their violation of the JEDEC non-compete over SDRAM? Did that document just not hold up in court? Why?
I thought that was long gone...or is this a completely different issue?
-Turkey
Having been in the business since 1988,I've seen all kinds of ideas like Rambus come and go. Generally, the idea is:
* Create an "essential" technology that is implemented in several large manufacturer's products.
* License the technology to everyone for big $
Most often what happens is that for a year or two, the "essential technology" may actually be very successful. Sometimes it even sticks around for the long haul, but the price becomes a lot lower. Then someone else comes out with "The Next Big Thing" or an open standard with simmilar functionality comes into existence. Some examples that are easy to remember:
* IBM's Microchannel Archetecture (was very cool for about two years, displaced by eisa, bus mastering ISA, then PCI)
* Adobe Postscript, Type 1 Fonts
* Zip drives
Rambus isn't essential any more... but they'll be aroud as much as I don't like them.
-- $G
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
so what i wanna know now is when can i get my ram in an 8x raid-0 array?
Hmm. I don't think fixed disks are going to be replaced any time soon. What could happen is wider use of clustering technology using computationaly fast diskless clients with loads of RAM, hooked up to a few server nodes with fixed disks for permanant storage and in case of power outages.
siggy played guitar
No.
Now pirst off!